Stars In Her Eyes

June 17, 2003 2:02PM

Even soap actors get a little starstruck. Bobbie Eakes (Macy, The Bold and the Beautiful) experienced a bit of that at the Nashville premiere of her movie Charlie’s War. Oprah Winfrey was there because her father, Vernon Winfrey, also appears in the film.
“I was shocked that Oprah went,” claims Eakes. “They said, ‘Oh, yeah, Oprah’s going,’ and I was like, ‘You wish.’ I got there and she was there with Stedman (Oprah’s longtime love), Gail (her best friend) and Natalie Cole. They came down on her jet.”
This isn’t the first time Eakes saw Winfrey in person. “I went to Oprah’s show a couple months before,” she shares. “I met her and she said to me, ‘That’s a beautiful blue outfit.’ Then I was standing near her at the premiere and she tapped my shoulder and said, ‘You did a great job in the movie.’ I said, ‘Oh, thank you. By the way I went to your show two months ago. You probably don’t remember.’ And she said, ‘You’re the one in that blue outfit.’ She’s so engaging and personable. She grabbed my hand and held it the whole time she was talking to me. I’m such a fan of hers.”
Eakes reveals that she barely had the chance to audition for Charlie’s War, which also stars Olympia Dukakis, Diane Ladd and Lynn Redgrave. “I had just moved to Nashville,” she recalls. “The very day I moved in — the moving truck had arrived and I was trying to get boxes put away — my manager said, ‘Can you run down and read for this film?’ I thought that it would be a day or two for a small part in the movie, but I didn’t care because I wanted to work with those actresses. I ran down there, and of course, I got the thing! It’s when you put the least amount of time into something sometimes when you get them.”